Former NBA player shares story of addiction with Rockville Centre students, parents

“When it comes to addiction, I think we’ve gone horribly wrong with the way we present it to our children,” former NBA player Chris Herren told a packed South Side High School auditorium on March 20. “I think we put way too much focus on the worst day, and we forget the first day.”

Several hundred attended the event, which was presented by the Rockville Centre Coalition for Youth, in conjunction with the school district, in order to raise awareness of the dangers of alcohol and drug use.

Herren, 42, started drinking Miller Lights behind his garage at age 14. He became a star high school basketball player in Fall River, Mass., later choosing to attend Boston College on a basketball scholarship. But he failed a drug test for marijuana and cocaine use before playing.

He transferred to Fresno State, in California, where he continued to use drugs. After his senior season, the Denver Nuggets selected him as the 33rd overall pick in the 1999 NBA Draft. Though he was getting his life back on track during his rookie year, he said, he fell back into drugs when he returned to Massachusetts during the offseason. Outside his home one night, a neighbor offered him a 40-milligram OxyContin pill, and Herren tried it.

“I threw it into my mouth, I went back to my house to finish watching cartoons with my son, having no idea that that decision . . . just changed my life forever,” he told the South Side High School crowd, which listened in silence.

His body soon became dependent on the pills, Herren said, and he began taking 1600 milligrams a day, spending $25,000 a month on the habit.

He returned to training camp, where he stopped using drugs for five days, he said. During that span, he couldn’t sleep. Instead, he spent nights vomiting, sweating, crying and “praying for God to take the pain away.” At that time, he found out that the Boston Celtics, a team he had loved since he was a child, had traded for him.

“My heart dropped; I got sick to my stomach,” Herren said. “. . . What should’ve been my dream come true . . . was my nightmare beginning, because I knew five days wasn’t enough.”

The night he got his chance to start as the Celtics’ point guard, he recalled, he spent much of the warmup session on the phone in a panic with his drug dealer, ultimately meeting him outside the arena to get pills minutes before the game.

Herren’s 90-minute talk covered his repeated alcohol and drug abuse, which ended his NBA career after less than two seasons, and also brought about the end of his basketball career overseas, where he played professionally for teams in Italy, Poland, Turkey, China, Germany and Iran.

He was arrested after crashing his car while overdosing, but continued doing drugs for seven more years after that.

“That’s how sad we are,” Herren said of drug addicts. “That’s how sick we really get. That it becomes the norm to wake up every morning chasing death for a feeling.”

He became “a street junkie” with no job, and in his early 30s, he “fell in love” with vodka. After a month in a rehabilitation program in upstate Rhinebeck, he returned home early to be with his wife, Heather, for the birth of their third child. He fell back into drugs that night, and Heather told him to leave.

“At 32 years old, I said goodbye to my family, turned my back and walked out of that hospital room knowing I just failed at everything in my life,” Herren said.

He returned to the treatment facility, and on Aug. 1, 2008, he remembered dropping to his knees, praying to beat the addiction. He has been sober ever since, and in 2011, he launched the Herren Project, a nonprofit foundation that helps individuals and families struggling with addiction. He speaks at schools around the country to spread awareness of addiction.

“I have never heard that auditorium as silent,” said Rockville Centre Deputy Mayor Kathy Baxley. “You could hear a pin drop because everybody was focused and mesmerized by what he had to say.”

Her son Matt, a sophomore, said he learned a valuable lesson from the discussion. “Everything can change quickly from one decision, because one time you were curious,” he said.

Herren challenged parents to stop accepting underage alcohol use as something they cannot control.

“I think kids have hijacked high school and parents say, ‘Kids will be kids; that’s what they’re going to do,’” he said, his voice growing louder and frustrated. “. . . Kids are going to make mistakes, but they have to understand that they’re making mistakes — not that it’s part of high school.”

Lily Zangari, president of South Side’s Students Against Destructive Decisions Club, said that in Rockville Centre and other communities, she sees parents taking drinking lightly. “A lot of people will host,” she added, “because they think it’s more safe than going out.”

Beyond efforts from the school district, such as bringing Herren to speak, sophomore Nick Pandolfo said that a simple conversation between a parent and a child can go a long way.

“I think it’s a matter of just really talking to your child and saying this is what your dangers are,” Pandolfo said after the presentation. “. . . When it comes from a parent and someone you really look up to, it can really mean a lot.”